During a Sunday morning appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, White House senior adviser David Plouffe accused Mitt Romney of having no core and lacks the conviction to be President. In his own words Plouffe stated

“He has no core, I can tell you as one thinking, working a few steps down from the president, what you need in that office is conviction. You need to have a true compass, and you have got to be willing to make tough calls. You get the sense with Mitt Romney that if he thought it was good to say the sky was green and the grass was blue to win an election, he’d say it.”

Plouffe cited Romney’s long and short term changes of heart on issues such as abortion, Cap-and-trade, gay rights, as examples of what he called a lack of any core.

While Mitt is certainly rightly or wrongly, stuck with the flip-flop problem, accusing of a lifelong Republican like Mitt of having no core, is a far stretch. But more than that, Obama’s adivser, may want to take some advice from me and not point too many fingers. Mr. Plouffe may not realize it but his candidate, the campaigner-in-chief, has a record of mind changing that would make John Kerry dizzy.

Let’s look at just some of the record;

Obama pledged to accept public campaign financing and changed his mind, he claimed to have supported welfare reform but he opposed welfare reform legislative, he promised to close Guantanamo Bay but keeps it open, he promised to try enemy combatants in civilian courts, but thankfully, refused to do so with 9/11 conspirators like KLM. President Obama supported Bush energy policies but in 2008, claimed he opposed those policies. As a senator, Obama promised to filibuster any bill that contained immunity for Telecommunication Companies involved in electronic surveillance but ended up backing a compromise bill. President Obama.

President Obama once pledged to withdraw out troops from Iraq immediately, but ultimately followed the Bush timeline that he opposed. During the 2008 primaries, Obama pledged to unilaterally renegotiate NAFTA but in the general election he indicated he didn’t want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA. According to a Fortune article dated 6/18/08 by Nina Easton entitled”Obama: NAFTA Not So Bad After All,” Fortune, Obama stated “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified”. Easton goes on to write that Obama conceded that point …….“after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA ‘devastating’ and ‘a big mistake,’ despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.”

Other Obama flip-flops include support for and against corporate tax increases, his changing position on a D.C. gun ban, contradictory positions on nuclear energy, his opposition and support for and against an individual health care mandate, and when it comes to a commitment that Obama insisted he made to protecting infants who survive abortion, he voted against just such a law.

President Obama has also backtracked on commitments to meet with leaders of state sponsors of terror without precondition, to an undivided Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, and to his claimed that marriage should be between only a man and a woman.

While David Plouffe tries to argue that Romney’s change of mind on essentially 4 issues , he neglects to remember that the man he advises, promised to repeal Patriot Act, then voted for it, once promised to “restore a law that was in place during the Clinton presidency called Paygo, then said he was not going to sacrifice his domestic priorities for spending reduction. The he went and spent more money than all the Presidents since Reagan held office. He first supported and opposed taking North Korea off a list of state’s that sponsor terrorism. Our President even promised to repeal Patriot Act, then voted for it.

But if you really want an example of having “no core” in accordance with David Plouffe’s characterization of such, who can forget this following exchange between Tim Russet and Senator Barack Obama on “Meet the Press” back in the year that he officially began his campaign for President;

Russet:“When we talked back in November of ‘04 after your election, I said, ‘There’s been enormous speculation about your political future. Will you serve your six-year term as United States senator from Illinois?’”

Obama:“I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things. But my thinking has not changed.”

Russert:“So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?”

Obama:“I will not.”

With all that flipping and flopping, I can’t help but feel the need to need to paraphrase a now infamous misstatement by Rick Perry and say to you, if you don’t think that all of Barack Obama’s flip-flops constitute his not having “a core”, “than you have no brain”. And as for David Plouffe, I think his remarks about Mitt Romney are a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black.

Mitt Romney has certainly shifted his position on at least three issues. However, he has not done so in a way that is particularly unique to the human condition and especially those human beings in politics. Rick Perry changed political Parties, and Barack Obama has changes his mind as often as he changes his clothes. In other words, while Romney is vulnerable to charge of flip-flopping, it’s time to shed a little light of truth on the accusations and put them in the right perspective.

The truth is, Romney has more of “a core” than most politicians do. An honest and sincere look at his personal life and careers in both business and politics, will prove that. And on a final not, I will take a politician whose conservative core values are evolving more to the right, than one whose core values are evolving in a direction that is becoming more and more socialist in nature.

Just because his candidate, Obama, doesn’t have a core and has changed his mind on several things after taking office, doesn’t mean that claiming Romney is the same is a stretch. It’s still true, no matter what he might say about his own candidate.